Robert Horton, Writing About Film

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About This Site

The Crop Duster has two goals. One is to organize links to my critical work: reviews written for The Herald (Everett, Washington) and Seattle Weekly; and public appearances and TV jobs. Selected past work for Film Comment and elsewhere is also linkified. You may also link to my website of 1980s reviews and learn more about my book on Frankenstein and my graphic novel, ROTTEN.

The second goal is to keep a daily record of films watched, annotated with brisk, brief comments. It's a slightly more advanced version of the movie list I kept, in Flair pen, thumbtacked next to my bed when I was twelve.

Pages

The Kaiser’s Lackey (aka Der Undertan, Wolfgang Staudte, 1951). An East German adaptation of a satirical novel by Heinrich Mann (author of The Blue Angel and brother of Thomas), charting the career of a pathetically spineless, yet ambitious and cruel, German in the late 19th- early 20th century. Nationalism, bureaucracy, and authority of all kinds are gleefully mocked, and the film has no soft edges. Brilliant performance by Werner Peters in the lead role.